Gil Garzón, Maritza AndreaRestrepo Restrepo, Carlos EstebanMillán Cardona, Leonidas de JesúsRojano, Benjamín Alberto2011-06-022011-10-142011-06-022011-10-142011-06-02978-958-8406-12-1http://hdl.handle.net/10567/64Abstract: Introduction. The current consumption trend is framed in developing and commercializing natural and pollutant free products. In the search for new technologies to obtain such products with added values, new national and international markets have been opened, achieving a higher competitiveness with, for instance, the use of a cleaner production technology like the extraction by the use of supercritical fluids, replacing highly contaminating traditional extraction methods that use toxic solvents, and micro encapsulation by spray-drying, which allows a lengthening of the product’s shelf life by protecting its main components, especially in food and pharmaceutical products. Besides, transportation, storage and the application in other matrixes gets easier. Objective. Two technologies were applied in this research work. They are just beginning to be applied in Colombia to obtain microencapsulated oleoresin from paprika. Methodology. The extraction by FSC-CO2 was made under 280 y 350 bar and 50°C y 70°C conditions. The response variables were: performance (%R), ASTA degrees, staining determination and theoretical relation of the isochromic fraction (R/Y) of red pigments (capsanthin and capsorubin) and yellow pigments (β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, capsolutein, zeaxanthin, violaxanthin). Visible ultra-violet spectroscopy UV-Vis was used for the quantification of β-carotene and the anti oxidative capability was evaluated by ABTS. In the micro encapsulation, the drying conditions were: Inlet temperature (180°C), outlet temperature (90°C), atomizing pressure (35 psi) and nozzle diameter (1mm). The relation oleoresin/encapsulant was: 1:10 using Gum Arabic or Capsule. Results. The best conditions found to extract supercritical fluids were 350 bar and 60°C. The results of the statistic design confirm that pressure affects the %R, ASTA and R/Y relation variables. Just the opposite happens with the temperature, p>0.05. Paprika oleoresin has a 1.09 ug/mL β-carotene concentration, and this is related to the anti oxidative capability found by ABTS, with a 4500 ± 2100 ųmol trolox/100 g oleoresin extract value. The electronic scanning microscopy allowed us to find that the best encapsulant was the Capsule (micro capsule’s diameter: 15 um), the percentage of encapsulated material 90% and the external oleoresin 12%. Conclusion. The use of the extraction by supercritical fluids and spray-drying microencapsulation are useful to have a product free of organic solvents and with a longer shelf life, quality characteristics that can be competitive in national and international markets because they have the color standards offered by those gotten with traditional extraction methodologies, which can be harmful due to the solvents they require.esCorporación Universitaria LasallistaPaprikaOleoresina microencapsuladaMicroencapsulaciónFluido supercríticoSpray-dryingBook chapter